Future requirements for military fighting vehicles, such as tanks, call for an unparalleled combination of fire power and protection integrated into a highly mobile and transportable vehicle of lower weight and reduced signature size. To meet these requirements, all systems must be compact and lightweight and capable of being packaged in a fighting vehicle with minimal consumption of space,
One system that has been particularly challenged to meet stringent space requirements is the armament system, particularly the ammunition handling aspects of the armament system. Ammunition rounds for the tank cannon must be stored in a safe and secure manner to withstand travel over rough terrain. Typically, the tank rounds are stored in one or more magazines located in the tank hull and/or turret bustle. The magazines must be designed to optimize storage density, thereby maximizing storage capacity consistent with available space that is not abundant. In the past, the task of retrieving rounds from the magazine(s) and loading them into the tank cannon was performed manually. Thus, considerable space within the tank hull and turret had to be allotted to accommodate body movements of a tank crew member necessary to retrieve and load the tank rounds. Also, such manual handling of tank rounds is not conducive to rapid fire action of the cannon in battle and jeopardizes the safety of the ammunition handling crew member.
To save at least some of the space required for the manual handling of tank ammunition, automated loading systems have been proposed and developed. Such autoloading systems successively retrieve tank rounds from a magazine(s) and load them into the tank cannon without intervention by a tank crew member. This autoloading approach to serving the tank cannon achieves a rapid firing rate and enhances crew safety.
One of the crucial components of an autoloading system is the magazine that must accommodate the successive retrievals of tank rounds incident to loading the tank cannon. Ammunition magazines are typically of two design approaches, i.e., passive and active. In the passive magazine design approach, the tank rounds are stored in stationary cells. The autoloader must then index to a multiplicity of different positions facing the individual cells in order to extract (retrieve) the tank rounds from the cells incident to loading the cannon. Thus, a passive magazine can be of a simple, straight forward design. However, the autoloader design must be highly complex in order to achieve the requisite indexing movements to the locations of the stationary magazine cells. Also, valuable space must be allotted to accommodate the indexing retrieval motions of the autoloader.
In the active magazine design approach, the cells are moveable, in that they are indexed one-by-one to a single retrieval location to which the autoloader is positioned to successively extract the tank rounds from the cells incident to loading the cannon. This approach adds complexity to the magazine, but significantly simplifies the autoloader design. Moreover, since indexing retrieval motion of the autoloader is avoided, valuable space is saved. Also, the active magazine design approach is more conducive to automated reloading, either from a resupply vehicle or at an ammunition depot.